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1939 

' opy 3 Some Notes on the Library of Congress 

AS A CENTER OF RESEARCH, TOGETHER WITH 
A SUMMARY ACCOUNT OF GIFTS RECEIVED FROM 
THE PUBLIC IN THE PAST FORTY YEARS 







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R E P R I N T E D , IN M A R C H 1939 , VV ] T H ° u T 
ADDITIONS OR OTHER CHANGES, FROM 
THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE LIBRARIAN 
OF CONGRESS FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 
ENDED JUNE 30, 1938 


Some Notes on the Library of Congress 

AS A CENTER OF RESEARCH, TOGETHER WITH 
A SUMMARY ACCOUNT OF GIFTS RECEIVED FROM 

THE PUBLIC IN THE PAST FORTY YEARS 


By William Adams Slade 


CHIEF REFERENCE LIBRARIAN OF THE 

U.L. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
u 


UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE • 1939 



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SOME NOTES ON THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
AS A CENTER OF RESEARCH 
TOGETHER WITH A SUMMARY ACCOUNT 
OF GIFTS RECEIVED FROM THE PUBLIC 
IN THE PAST FORTY YEARS 


The Library of Congress, functioning as it does in the service 
of Congress and the entire governmental establishment, func¬ 
tions also in the service qf the general public, among other ways as 
a center of research for the benefit of investigators coming to it in 
numbers from at home and abroad, providing them with whatever 
material to their purposes the collections afford, with special facilities 
for their studies and with expert guidance in pursuing them. These 
aids to research are made possible by the strong support the Library 
receives from Congress, supplemented by the support, also strong, it 
receives from the public. The gifts from the public, of materials and 
money, have brought and are continuing to bring new distinctions to 
the collections and increased strength to the service, notably the 
service to research. 

An account of these matters may, for purposes of illustration, con¬ 
veniently begin with the typical experience in the Library of a re¬ 
search worker from China, Ch’ao-ting Chi, of the province of Shansi, 
More properly, the account which is to follow may begin with the 
scene in Ch’ao-ting Chi’s native province that impelled him to his 
studies, for Shansi is a part of that great mountainous area of northern 
China which Theodore Roosevelt had in mind and sharply pictured 
when, in a message to Congress, he wrote of the lesson to the United 
States of deforestation in China: 

“Denudation leaves naked soil; then gullying cuts down to the bare rock; and 
meanwhile the rock-waste buries the bottomlands. When the soil is gone, men 
must go; and the process does not take long." 

Upon young Chi the disastrous consequences of flood, drought, 
withering crops and famine made a vivid impression which followed 
him through his college years in the neighborhood of Peiping and 
later through his graduate courses at the University of Chicago and 


5 




at Columbia. It aroused in him an ambition to trace the develop¬ 
ment from earliest times of irrigation and flood control in China and 
to discover, if he might, the dominant tendencies in the evolution of 
Chinese economy, thereby contributing to a better understanding of 
the history of his people. But to do this he would have to examine 
many Chinese records. Must he return to China in order to consult 
them? Or was there a library in the United States where they were 
to be found? He took his question to the Library of Congress and 
to its chief sinologist, the head of the Division of Orientalia. 

The formalities that followed in the Division of Orientalia, if for¬ 
malities they may be called, were very simple. The Chief of the 
Division quite pertinently furnished his visitor with the appropriate 
books, conferred with him frequently while he was pursuing his in¬ 
vestigation, found out what special questions were coming up and 
kept his study table supplied with the volumes he needed. For prep¬ 
arations to receive this investigator or to receive any of the numerous 
readers requiring the use of Chinese books had been going on in 
systematic fashion for over a quarter of a century and, through the 
use of funds voted by Congress and the gifts of individual benefactors, 
the Library had come to possess the largest collection of books in 
Chinese to be found outside of the Orient. To the surprise and delight 
of Dr. Chi, just what he needed for examination and analysis was at 
his command and in abundance. Also, he discovered that the Chief 
of the Division of Orientalia, American born and educated, had for 
ten years resided in his native district in Shansi. 

In his work, later published, Dr. Chi relates that an immense 
amount of untouched source material was hidden in the books put 
before him—gazetteers (in Chinese, of course) containing descriptive 
accounts of the many localities within the scope of his survey, special 
Chinese works on “water benefits,” and dynastic histories. As he 
went on with the examination of this material, he found his belief in 
the importance of water-control to Chinese history confirmed and a 
conception taking form in his mind of what he calls the Key Economic 
Area and its relation, through repeated shifting, to unity and division 
in the history of China. To his book, published under the auspices 
of the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, he gave 
the title, Key Economic Areas in Chinese History as Revealed in the 
Development of Public Works for Water-Control. 

Another scholar working in the Division of Orientalia came under 
a project sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies to 
put into English a part of the history of the Dynasty of Han, one of 


6 


the works which Dr. Chi had found especially helpful. Still another 
scholar, an American lately returned from China, came to trace out 
the evidences through the centuries of deforestation in Shansi. His 
findings are now having the attention of the Soil Conservation Service 
in Washington, which turns to experience in China in its study of 
the problems resulting from an erosion of American soil now costing 
the farmers of this country, in loss of soil values, a sum estimated at 
$400,000,000 annually. 

Within the past fiscal year 1,225 investigators 1 from all parts of 
this country and a score of foreign countries sought out the Library to 
engage in research, among them representatives of 143 American 
colleges and universities, 15 universities in foreign lands and 49 
learned societies. Accommodations for these visitors are arranged 
in alcoves, stacks and galleries, in office rooms and wherever else 
space can be found. Most coveted of all are certain little study 
rooms, in which the occupants can work each in complete seclusion, 
with the materials for his study under hand and the resources of the 
Library at immediate call. There are 226 of these study rooms, 52 in 
the Main Building and 174 in the recently completed Annex. 

During the year following the opening of the study rooms in 1927, 
there were 261 of these investigators; up to the present time there 
have been over nine thousand in all, men and women from the forty- 
eight states and from lands beyond the seas, engaged in research at 
almost any segment of the circle of human interest—Mr. A, from 
California, to use materials on early voyages to the Pacific coast; 
Dr. B, from New England, to add to the documentation of his forth¬ 
coming book on foreign relations; Dr. C, also from New England, to 
work on the Maya Calendar; Mr. D, from the Straits Settlements, to 
continue his studies on the Chinese in Malaya; Dr. E, from Peru, 
who was making a comparison of educational methods in North and 
South America; Miss F, from West Virginia, to study certain 
phases in the history of the American Revolution—and so the record 
goes. All that the Library can give to such workers is theirs for the 
asking. Other satisfactions, too, may await them, for, as Professor 
Temperley says: 

“There is no reward like the scholar’s when, after long search, he suddenly 
sees his way into the heart of a problem. It is then that he shares the joy of 
the explorer or the inventor or of Keats looking into Homer.” 

1 These statistics are only of those persons who register for the “special facilities” of the study rooms and 
study tables. They take no account, either, of the investigators coming daily to the divisions of special¬ 
ized service or of the thousands of readers in the public reading rooms, many of whom are engaged in serious 
research. 


7 



The collections of the largest library in the world, with their five 
and a half million books and over seven million manuscripts, maps, 
prints and pieces of music, are the magnet that attracts. But, to 
give their full value to research, such extensive collections need more 
than catalogs, classifications, bibliographies and the other tools of 
library science. That “more” is the human element, the vitalizing 
aid found in men of training and experience, proficient in their sub¬ 
jects and, out of their own fund of knowledge, capable of guiding 
investigators beyond the points at which the helpfulness of the 
bibliographical apparatus ends. 

So, for the most effective use of these vast collections, this human 
element has been called into play in a service—a superservice, in 
fact, and the only one of its kind among libraries—consisting of 
specialists on the staff, occupants of the endowed “chairs,” and con¬ 
sultants. These three groups together form something in the nature 
of a “Faculty,” each member serving to assist in the perfecting of 
the collections and the interpretation of them to the investigators. 
There are now five of these endowed chairs but only two endowed 
consultantships, one in Hispanic literature, the other in poetry, both 
established by Mr. Archer M. Huntington. With these two excep¬ 
tions, the system of consultants has thus far been carried on under 
grants, now expiring, of the General Education Board and the Carnegie 
Corporation of New York. 

An endowment that would enlarge the group of consultants to at 
least twelve and provide for their permanency Dr. Putnam regards 
as now the most important need of the Library as “an institution of 
learning.” As an amount sufficient to cover that end he names 
$750,000—a petty sum in contrast to the $180,000,000 which American 
industry has subscribed in a single year for research in science and 
technology, and plainly so when it is realized that, to institute 
twelve consultantships would mean an outlay of only $30,000 a year 
and that, on a principal of $750,000, such a yearly income of $30,000 
could be assured by the provision in The Library of Congress Trust 
Fund Act which enables The Trust Fund Board to treat such a fund 
as a permanent loan to the Treasury, carrying interest at four per 
cent per annum. 

For the “chairs,” Dr. Putnam points out, endowments in larger 
amounts are needed—some $200,000 each—and he names especially 
the need for “chairs” of Political Science, Social Science, Economics, 
Jurisprudence, and International Relations. 

Dr. Tyler Dennett, in his biography of John Hay, writes of “that 


great democratic institution of letters, the Library of Congress.” 
Dr. James Truslow Adams, in The Epic oj America , describes it as 
coming “straight from the heart of democracy.” More than a gen¬ 
eration ago Congress made such descriptions of the Library possible 
by providing it with a building of its own, centering the responsi¬ 
bility for the government of the institution wholly upon the Librarian, 
and making it mandatory that the employees should be appointed 
“solely with reference to their fitness for their particular duties.” 

And Congress has continued to give strength with its appropriations. 
For the Main Building, first opened to the public toward the end of 
1897, for the successive additions to it and for the Annex, built to hold 
ten million volumes and yet have space for the Copyright Office, a 
number of the major operations of the Library and 174 study rooms, 
Congress has appropriated to date a total of $18,757,000. For the 
first complete fiscal year that followed the occupancy of the building, 
that is, for the fiscal year 1898-99, the appropriations to cover all 
ordinary expenses were $299,600; for the fiscal year 1938-39, they 
were $3,065,000. In other words, the legislative branch of the Gov¬ 
ernment, in the course of forty years, increased the appropriations for 
its Library tenfold. During these forty years the appropriations by 
Congress for all the purposes of the institution, including those for the 
additions to the Main Building and for the erection of the Annex, came 
to a total of $63,450,000. 2 

In 1925 Congress gave still other expression of its interest in the 
Library and its developments by sanctioning a step which marked 
the beginning of a new era in its history. Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague 
Coolidge in that year, after presenting the auditorium for chamber 
music, erected at a cost of $94,000, expressed her purpose to endow 
the Division of Music. But, because the Library up to that time was 
without the legal right to hold in its own name either gifts or bequests 
of money in the nature of endowments, Mrs. Coolidge, in carrying out 
her intention, was obliged to choose a trust company to act as a 
trustee and, in the instrument drawn, to designate the Librarian of 
Congress as the agent to expend for the purposes she had specified the 
income received from a principal in excess of $500,000. Congress, 
appreciating the situation, promptly provided the remedy by creating 
The Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, a quasi-corporation, 
legally competent to serve as trustee of endowments for the Library. 
The act establishing this Board recognizes also the authority of the 

> Of this sum, $10,361,000 is offset by copyright fees and receipts from the sale of printed cards and photo 
duplicates, covered into the Treasury. 


9 



Librarian to accept in the name of the United States gifts and bequests 
of money intended for immediate disbursement. 

The results of this legislation were soon to be seen. During the 
period 1925-38, trust funds amounting to $2,202,000 were presented 
for the uses prescribed by the donors, the investments brought a yield 
of $746,000, and sums aggregating $1,414,000 were entrusted to the 
Librarian for immediate disbursement. Altogether, in a little less 
than fourteen years $4,362,000 thus became available “for the benefit 
of, or in connection with, the Library, its collections, or its service,” 
as provided in the Act of^March 3, 1925. 3 During the previous one 
hundred twenty-five years, dating back to the establishment of the 
Library itself in 1800, only a single endowment was created in it—the 
Gardiner Greene Hubbard endowment, established under the will of 
Mrs. Gertrude M. Hubbard. For the acceptance of this benefaction, 
a special act of Congress was necessary. 

The gains to research resulting from such giving were many. A 
“chair” of music was endowed by Mrs. Coolidge, a “chair” of Amer¬ 
ican history by Mr. William Evarts Benjamin, a “chair” of fine arts 
by the Carnegie Corporation, a “chair” of geography by the bequest 
of James Benjamin Wilbur, a “chair” of aeronautics by the Daniel 
Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, together with a 
fund for immediate use in building up what is now regarded as the 
largest existing collection on aeronautical subjects. And Mr. Archer 
M. Huntington established an endowment enabling the Library to 
systematize and intensify its purchasing of books in Hispanic-American 
fields. Of the 120,000 volumes now in this section of the Library, 
20,000, thus far, have been purchased under the terms of this endow¬ 
ment. 

While developments such as those described were taking place, the 
collections of the Library kept mounting upward and the materials 
of research continued to accumulate. The collections themselves are 
increased by various means and from many sources—Congressional 
appropriations, the deposit by the Smithsonian Institution of the 
publications of learned societies in all parts of the world, the inter¬ 
national exchanges, which bring the documentary publications of all 
nations, the Copyright Office (from which, however, only a selection 
of the copyrighted material is taken), federal, state and municipal 
governments—all of which provide a steady flow of documents— 
and an interested American public that sends in thousands of gifts 
annually. 

* For the text of this Act see p. 26. 


IO 



Before 1899 there were few gifts of significance. The records show 
hardly more than three—a selection of Chinese books presented in the 
^O’s by Emperor Mu-tsung (T’ung-chih), medical and historical 
books bequeathed in the ’80’s by Doctor Joseph M. Toner and the 
engravings in the collection of Gardiner Greene Hubbard presented in 
1898 by his widow, Mrs. Gertrude M. Hubbard, who afterwards 
endowed the collection. A year or two after the removal of the 
Library to its new home in 1897, a new order began. As soon as 
private citizens awoke to the realization that the Library of Congress 
was functioning for them and not for Congress alone, they began to 
respond, gradually at first and then in increasing numbers, adding 
with gifts, besides money, a million items to the four distinct collec¬ 
tions of books, maps, music and prints, and more than a million items 
to the fifth distinct collection, that of manuscripts. The two million 
and more manuscript pages in photographic reproduction obtained 
under the grant of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and more particu¬ 
larly described in a later paragraph, were likewise added to this last- 
named collection. 

Again, one of the larger rooms in the Main Building, to be known 
as the Hispanic Society Room, has been remodelled in the past few 
months, following plans drawn by Mr. Paul P. Cret to give it a His¬ 
panic atmosphere and setting, and here the extensive Hispanic collec¬ 
tions are being assembled. A tablet on one of its walls bears the 
following inscription: 

THE HISPANIC FOUNDATION 
IN 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
THIS CENTER 

FOR THE PURSUIT OF STUDIES 
IN SPANISH, PORTUGUESE AND LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE 
HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED 
WITH THE GENEROUS COOPERATION OF 
THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA 
IN EXTENSION 

OF ITS SERVICE TO LEARNING 

The “cooperation” has consisted and is expected to consist, not 
merely in contributions of material for the collection, but in others, in 
its behalf, towards the equipment and maintenance of the room itself. 

Because the Library of Congress is a national institution and be¬ 
cause it is interested in furthering the interests of music, Mrs. Gertrude 


Clarke Whittall presented her superb quintet of Stradivari stringed 
instruments and created an endowment to ensure their use in an 
annual series of concerts. They are not, therefore, as some music- 
lovers may have feared, remaining as mere museum pieces but, under 
this endowment and in the hands of chamber-music artists of estab¬ 
lished reputation, are continuing the active life for which they were 
intended. They will have a permanent home in the pavilion, another 
of Mrs. WhittalTs gifts, erected in the northwest court, contiguous to 
the auditorium for chamber music. 

With the financial assistance of the Beethoven Association and the 
Friends of Music, the Division of Music augmented its collection of 
original musical scores by securing in manuscript form a complete 
Bach cantata, a Haydn piano sonata, two Mozart minuets, Schu¬ 
mann’s “Spring” symphony, songs by Brahms, including an early 
unpublished version of the ending of his Serenade, opus 58, no. 8, 
and the orchestral score of Alban Berg’s atonal opera, Wozzeck. 
Through the action of the composers themselves or their friends or 
publishers, it was able also to obtain the original scores of Edward 
MacDowell’s Indian Suite, George W. Chadwick’s Symphonic Sketches , 
Horatio Parker’s Hora Novissima, Frederick S. Converse’s Mystic 
Trumpeter, Charles T. Griffes’ Pleasure Dome oj Kubla Khan, and 
Deems Taylor’s Through the Looking-Glass. In addition, Mrs. 
Coolidge presented her invaluable collection of autograph music and 
her extensive correspondence with the prominent musicians of the day. 

When Ernest Bloch turned over to the Library his complete store 
of manuscripts, sketches and correspondence, the Music Division was 
for the first time entrusted with a composer’s complete biographical 
record. Edward MacDowell, through the generosity of his friend, 
Templeton Strong, is almost as richly represented; among Mr. Strong’s 
gifts are fifteen of the composer’s original scores and more than one 
hundred of his letters. Mrs. Charles Martin Loeffler presented a 
number of her husband’s manuscripts, among them the unpublished 
symphony, Hora Mystica. A substantial share of the lifework of 
Victor Herbert was received from Mrs. Robert Bartlett, his only 
daughter. And, aided by the grants of the Carnegie Corporation 
and the enthusiasm of Mr. John Lomax and his son Alan, four thou¬ 
sand or more pieces were transcribed on records and added to the 
Archive of American Folk-Song. Initiated by a group of the friends of 
the Music Division, this Archive functions as a national center where 
are gathered original folk-song materials, obtainable only by direct per¬ 
sonal contacts such as those effected by these two workers in the field. 


I 2 


The gifts of Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell, the Pennell and 
Pennell-Whistler collections, were unique in both range and purpose. 
In leaving his entire estate for the endowment of the Division of 
Fine Arts, Mr. Pennell, in his will, gave as a reason that “the United 
States is spending money on prints and encouraging art and artists 
and has encouraged me.” Here, too, in the Division of Fine Arts, 
are the Collections bequeathed by Crosby S. Noyes, George Lothrop 
Bradley and Charles L. Freer and those presented by Mrs. Gardiner 
Greene Hubbard, 4 Mrs. Alexander Drake, Dr. and Mrs. Otto H. F. 
Vollbehr and Mrs. E. Crane Chadbourne. Here, also, are the Pic¬ 
torial Archives of American Architecture, functioning under a grant 
of the Carnegie Corporation and comprising already twenty-five 
thousand photographs of the rapidly vanishing architecture of the 
country’s early days and over seventeen thousand sheets of measured 
drawings prepared by the Historic American Buildings Survey. 
Here, too, is the Cabinet of American Illustration, now containing, 
through the responsiveness of sixty-one donors, over three thousand 
original drawings made towards the end of the nineteenth century in 
the “Golden Age” of book illustrating. 

Philanthropy aided also in the creation of new divisions in the 
organization, such as the Semitic Division, formed through the gift 
by Mr. Jacob H. Schiff of fifteen thousand volumes of Semitica which 
Dr. Ephraim Deinard had assembled while exploring unusual sources 
of supply in Europe, Asia and Africa; the Slavic Division, built upon 
eighty thousand volumes comprising the private library of Major- 
General Gennadius Vasilievich Yudin, of Krasnoiarsk, Siberia, pur¬ 
chased on terms which made the acquisition substantially a gift; and 
the Division of Aeronautics, launched, as already remarked, with a 
grant from the Guggenheim Fund. 

The resources of the Division of Orientalia were notably strength¬ 
ened with six thousand volumes from an American diplomat and 
orientalist, Mr. William Woodville Rockhill, over one thousand 
volumes dealing for the greater part with law and jurisprudence, 
from the present Ambassador to China, Mr. Nelson T. Johnson, and 
the twenty-one thousand volumes in the private library of Mr. Wang 
Shu-an of Tientsin, purchased for the Chinese collection by Mr. 
Andrew W. Mellon. In 1905 the Chinese Government presented the 
two thousand volumes which had been a part of its exhibit at the 

< Described in the Library’s publication, Catalog of the Gardiner Greene Hubbard collection of engravings, 
presented to the Library of Congress by Mrs. Gardiner Greene Hubbard , compiled by Arthur Jeffrey Parsons 
(Washington, 1905 517 p.). 


x 3 



Louisiana Purchase Exposition and in 1908, in appreciation of the 
action of the United States in remitting a very considerable part of 
the Boxer Indemnity, sent to the Library, in care of a special envoy, 
Mr. T’ang Shao-i, a copy of the Chinese encyclopedia, Ku-chin 
T’u-shu Chi-ch’eng, in 5,041 volumes. 

In 1929 Mrs. William H. Moore presented four albums containing 
the forty-six original paintings on silk executed by Chiao Ping-chen 
in the seventeenth century. These paintings, having tilling and 
weaving for their themes, are invaluable, not only as works of art, 
but also as cultural documents. The artist, to use the words of the 
court scholar, Yen Yii-tun, “took the idyllic scenes of rural life de¬ 
scribed in the Pin Feng Odes and drew them to western perspective, 
in which objects near and far, high and low, are differentiated accord¬ 
ing to clearly defined rules, so that the scenes and implements of hus¬ 
bandry and all. the various stages of silk culture are depicted with an 
exactness that leaves nothing unexpressed.’* 

For the better information of the western world, a series of biog¬ 
raphies of eminent Chinese of the past three centuries was prepared 
in the Division of Orientalia during the four years beginning with 
1934 in a project supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1938 
this same Foundation made a grant, to continue until 1943, for the 
recataloging of the books in the Division—179,000 volumes in Chinese, 
27,000 volumes in Japanese and 2,000 volumes in Korean. 

The Division of Maps was enriched with a collection of ancient 
Chinese maps and atlases in manuscript, likewise presented by Mr. 
Mellon; manuscript maps of the sixteenth century showing the 
coasts, as then conceived, of southern Mexico, Central America and 
northern South America, purchased for the Library by Mr. Edward 
S. Harkness; the Woodbury Lowery collection of maps relating to 
the Spanish possessions within the present limits of the United 
States * * 5 and the maps in manuscript contained in the bequest of 
Henry Harrisse. This bequest included also the most nearly com¬ 
plete set of his own writings known to exist. 

The distinction of the John Boyd Thacher collections is best told 
by the series of printed catalogs 6 which the Library has issued and 

* Described in the Library’s publication, The Lowery Collection: a descriptive list of maps of the Spanish 

possessions within the present limits of the United States, 1502-1820, by Woodbury Lowery, edited with notes 

by P. L. Phillips (Washington, 1912, 567 p.). 

6 Catalogue of the John Boyd Thacher Collection of Incunabula, compiled by Frederick W. Ashley (1915,329 
p.); Catalogue of Books Relating to the French Revolution and Catalogue of Early Americana, Miscellaneous Books 
and Bibliographic Apparatus, compiled under the direction of Frederick W. Ashley by Annie L. Shiley (1931, 2 
parts in 1 volume, 120 p.); Catalogue of Autographs Relating to the French Revolution, compiled by Henry El- 
dridge Bourne with the assistance of Gertrude Albion MacOormick, and Catalogue of Autographs of Euro¬ 
pean Notables, compiled under the direction of Henry Eldridge Bourne (1931, 2 parts in 1 volume, 191 p.). 





which give the contents in detail. The incunabula which Mr. Thacher 
brought together are notable for their number, for the presses they 
represent and for the rarities they comprise. The early Americana 
and the numerous editions of the Geographia of Ptolemy were his 
working tools while he was writing his Christopher Columbus and his 
other contributions to early American history. His varied interests 
resulted in a collection of autograph letters and documents of Euro¬ 
pean celebrities, numbering over fourteen hundred pieces, and a col¬ 
lection of books, autograph letters and documents relating to the 
French ^Revolution, containing over three thousand pieces. After 
Mr. Thacher’s death, Mrs. Thacher deposited these collections in the 
Library and subsequently bequeathed them to it. 

Still another bequest, the books from the library of Justice Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, has an added interest because of the recorded impres¬ 
sions which these volumes made upon the sensitive yet critical mind 
of that highly cultured jurisprudent. 

The diversity of these benefactions is continued in such gifts as those 
of the private library of Susan B. Anthony, presented by Miss 
Anthony; the Henry Carrington Bolton books on chemistry and 
alchemy, presented by Mrs. Bolton; the Harry Houdini library of 
magic and psychical research, bequeathed by Mr. Houdini, and the 
John Davis Batchelder Collection, presented by Mr. Batchelder, rich 
in carefully selected books, manuscripts and prints, many of them of 
great rarity, one being the Cholmondeley copy of the first folio of 
Shakespeare, and all of them chosen for their significance in the history 
of culture. Or, to name a gift of money, this diversity is again illus¬ 
trated by a grant received from an anonymous donor for bibliographi¬ 
cal research in the field of American literature. 

The story of the woman movement for the century and a half 
from the publication in 1792 of Mary Wollstonecraft's book, Vindi¬ 
cation of the Rights of Women , to the present time is told in a collection 
of books admirably supplementing the Susan B. Anthony library, 
mentioned above. Presented by the National American Woman 
Suffrage Association and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of 
that Association from 1900 to 1904 and continuously since 1915, the 
collection consists of the feminist library of Mrs. Catt, collected 
since 1890, and scattered older books contributed from the libraries 
of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice 
Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, Elizabeth 
Smith Miller, and others, together with bound volumes of the periodi¬ 
cals that were the organs of the movement for over sixty years. 



RARE BOOK ROOM*. EAST END 































RARE BOOK ROOM: WEST END 











































Between one and two million manuscript letters and documents 
have been thus far presented to the Division of Manuscripts. Impor¬ 
tant among them are the Presidential papers. When this inflow of 
gifts began, that Division already contained the papers of four 
Presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison 
and James Monroe—which had been purchased by Congress from 
their representatives in the period from 1834 to 1849 and in 1903 
transferred to the Library by executive order. Since that year the 
gifts of this sort have included the papers of Andrew Jackson, from the 
grandsons and granddaughter of Francis P. Blair, Woodbury, Gist 
and Montgomery Blair and Mrs. Minna Blair Ripley; the papers of 
Martin Van Buren, from Mrs. Smith Thompson Van Buren and Dr. 
Stuyvesant Fish Morris; of William Henry Harrison, from Mrs. 
Benjamin Harrison and John Scott Harrison; of Abraham Lincoln, 
from his son, Robert T. Lincoln; of James A. Garfield, from his sons, 
James R. Garfield, Harry A. Garfield, Irwin McDowell Garfield and 
Abram Garfield, and his daughter, Mrs. Joseph Stanley-Brown; of 
Grover Cleveland, from Mrs. Thomas J. Preston and Professor Robert 
M. McElroy; of Benjamin Harrison, from his widow, Mrs. Mary 
Lord Harrison; of William McKinley, from George B. Cortelyou, 
and the papers of Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, turned 
over to the Library by their own action. The Presidential papers, 
when all are bound, will make a series of more than three thousand 
volumes. The papers of certain other Presidents are held in the 
Library as deposits, the title to them being retained by their owners. 

Gifts also were made of the papers of more than twenty members of 
Presidential cabinets, besides the five already mentioned who became 
Presidents. Especially important are the papers of the Secretaries of 
State, among whom are Marshall, Washbume, Blaine, Bayard, 
Gresham, Sherman, Root, Knox, Bryan and Lansing. Also impor¬ 
tant—to name only three officials who held other portfolios—are the 
papers of Caleb Cushing, Attorney General under President Pierce, 
and those of two of Lincoln’s Secretaries, Stanton and Welles. To the 
original materials for the period which these two Secretaries represent¬ 
ed, Mr. Bernard M. Baruch recently added some seven thousand 
letters forming the correspondence of Alexander H. Stephens, Vice- 
President of the Confederacy and a Member of Congress before and 
after the Civil War. 

Private citizens evidently feel it a responsibility upon them to turn 
over to the Library any historical manuscripts in their possession, 
knowing that these manuscripts will be administered in association 


with related original material and will accordingly be doubly useful to 
scholars. Among those represented by the papers thus received are 
many members of the Senate and House of Representatives; two 
families distinguished for several generations in American public life, 
the Blairs and the Breckinridges; in military affairs, Generals George 
B. McClellan, Benjamin F. Butler and Tasker H. Bliss; in the field of 
diplomacy, Henry White and Brand Whitlock; in the fields of indus¬ 
trial enterprise and benefaction, Andrew Carnegie; in science, Simon 
Newcomb; in literature, Walt Whitman, Percy B. Shelley, Louise Chand¬ 
ler Moulton, Louise Imogen Guiney, Edwin Markham, Edwin Arlington 
Robinson, George Sterling and Elinor Wylie; in art, John Singleton Cop¬ 
ley and Charles F. McKim; in newspaper publishing, Joseph Pulitzer. 

The late J. Pierpont Morgan presented to the Library a complete 
set of autographs of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
containing letters of high historical value. Mr. Edward S. Harkness 
gave a great collection of manuscripts of the period of the “conquista- 
dores” in Mexican and Peruvian history. It includes more than a 
thousand documents in the Peruvian section and nearly twice as 
much material relating to Mexico. 7 

Through the munificence of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., original 
materials of extraordinary value for research in American history were 
obtained in photographic reproductions of over two million pages of 
manuscripts in the archives and other institutions of Great Britain, 
France, Spain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, 
Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, the Scandinavian countries, Canada and 
Mexico. At the expiration of the five-year period allotted under the 
terms of the gift for the execution of this project, it was further con¬ 
tinued under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. 

With a second munificent gift, Mr. Rockefeller provided the funds 
for transforming the Library’s Union Catalog into a piece of biblio¬ 
graphical apparatus quite without parallel. In content this catalog 
is a repertory of books important to research which are available in 
about seven hundred libraries in the United States and Canada. An 
auxiliary index gives the record of about five thousand special collec¬ 
tions contained in the libraries of those two countries. The use of the 
catalog and its auxiliary is illustrated in the Library’s daily corre¬ 
spondence. “Where is there a copy to be found of Goya’s Caprichos, 

7 The Peruvian documents are described in a Calendar of Spanish Manuscripts concerning Peru, 1581-1661, 
compiled by Miss Stella R. Clemence, of the Library staff (1932, 336 p.). In a second volume, Documents 
from Early Peru: the Pizarros and the Almaqros, 1531-1678, (1936, 263 p.), Miss Clemence prints the full text 
and translations of the documents in these papers relative to the three Pizarros and two Almagros. A third 
volume, which she is now preparing, will provide a calendar of the Mexican documents. 


l 9 



published in Madrid about 1820?” “There is a copy in the library at 
Harvard.”—“Where may one find the second part of William Turner’s 
Herball, published in 1562?” “There is a copy in Washington in the 
Army Medical Library.”—“Does any library in the United States 
contain Christopher Smart’s Hymns for the Amusement of Children , 
published in Philadelphia in 1791?” “This is a book not often found; 
the American Antiquarian Society has a copy.”—“Do you know of 
any collection of books designed by Bruce Rogers?” “Purdue Uni¬ 
versity has such a collection; it was acquired in 1932.”—“Can you 
tell me of any special collection having to do with John and Charles 
Wesley?” “The Emory University in Atlanta has a Wesley collection 
of over three thousand titles.” 

The Union Catalog is of value also for the innumerable biblio¬ 
graphical details it supplies; in this respect it is in constant use by the 
Library of Congress in its own behalf and in behalf of other libraries 
or individuals applying to it. With the funds provided by Mr. Rocke¬ 
feller, the cards in this repertory were increased from 2,000,000 to 
8,350,000; further expanded under Congressional appropriations, it 
now contains over 10,000,000 entries. 

Another aid to research is to be found in the Photoduplication Service, 
which has been provided by the Rockefeller Foundation with equipment 
of the latest type and a revolving fund for operating expenses. 

Still other projects are under way, illustrating a tendency to entrust 
to the Library or to center in it scientific undertakings of a character 
to profit by its collections, its apparatus or expert counsel, as, for 
instance, one for the cataloging of certain intricate material beyond the 
abilities of the ordinary library—a project originating with the 
American Library Association, financed by the General Education 
Board and made operative by a Cooperative Cataloging and Classi¬ 
fication Service functioning within the organization of the Library. 
Similarly, two items in the program of the American Council of 
Learned Societies—the preparation of a census of medieval and renais¬ 
sance manuscripts in the United States and Canada 8 and the prepara¬ 
tion of a catalog of Latin and vernacular alchemical manuscripts in 
those two countries 9 —were entrusted to the Library for their execution, 
the General Education Board and the Council meeting the costs. 
A third item in the Council’s program more recently centered in the 

* Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, by Seymour de Ricci, 
with the assistance of William J. Wilson, (New York, H. W. Wilson Company, 1935-37. 2 v.). An index, 
now in press, will follow. 

‘Compiled by William J. Wilson, of the Library staff, and to appear as v. 6 of Osiris, now in press. 


20 



Library—a project for the development of Indie studies—is now 
being executed with the support of the Carnegie Corporation. 

And, to give another illustration of this tendency, the collection of 
rotographic reproductions of medieval or early modern manuscripts— 
or, in a few instances, early printed books—which the Modern Lan¬ 
guage Association of America has brought together and is regularly 
increasing is administered by the Library for the widest possible use 
of these important documents. 

Just as these pages were going to press, Miss Annie-May Hegeman 
deeded to The Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, in fee simple, 
the valuable estate in downtown Washington, which had formerly 
been the residence of her stepfather, the late Henry Kirke Porter, 
scholar, philanthropist, business man, long a manufacturer in Pitts¬ 
burgh, and at one time a Representative in Congress from the State 
of Pennsylvania. As directed by Miss Hegeman, the Board is to 
sell the estate in its discretion and divide the proceeds equally be¬ 
tween the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, each 
fund resulting to constitute a “Henry Kirke Porter Memorial Fund”. 
Miss Hegeman attaches no condition to her gift but makes the sug¬ 
gestion that the income received by the Library of Congress be ap¬ 
plied to the maintenance of its system of consultants. 

Fundamentally, the Library is all that its name implies. It is 
the library of Congress. It was established by Congress; it exists 
for the purposes of Congress. In practice, however, through a de¬ 
velopment which began with the present century, it serves, Dot merely 
the entire governmental establishment, but the whole public as well. 
It is, in effect, our national library. It aids investigators the country 
over through a system of interlibrary loans based upon the simple 
principle of “the unusual book for the unusual need.” It acts also 
as a bureau of information in all matters involving the serious use of 
books. Its publications, widely distributed, include bibliographical 
lists, catalogs and printed texts. Librarianship generally—and there¬ 
fore scholarship generally—has also the benefit of its experience and 
its processes in the classifying and cataloging of printed materials 
and in bibliographic and reference work. More than six thousand 
libraries in the United States subscribe to its service of printed 
cards, of which it carries a stock of over a hundred million; their use 
of this service has gone far in making the Library a central cataloging 
bureau for libraries from coast to coast and even in foreign lands. 

The Library as a center of research has prototypes that are old, old 
as Plato’s Academy, for the original Platonic society was preeminently 


21 


an organization for inquiry and research. In its own development 
the Library of Congress has come to have a “Faculty,” not of teachers, 
but of the consultants and other specialists whose function is to aid 
inquirers in the most effective use of its collections. After a fashion, 
this modern house of studies is like the medieval Study General in 
that it is “a place where students from all parts are received.” The 
universality of its contents and its service, the attendance of an ad¬ 
visory staff that brings the human element to bear in making the 
collections alive arise out of its democratic support. There may even be 
justification for the belief—and the more so if the permanency of the sys¬ 
tem of consultants can be assured—that the Library as a democratic in¬ 
stitution of research is playing a unique part in making contemporary 
that aspect of medieval thought and medieval culture which Professor 
Gilson emphasized at the Harvard tercentenary celebration—the feel¬ 
ing for the universal character of truth in its own right, a conviction 
“whose lasting value is so high that everything should be done in 
order to revive it under some form suitable to our own times.” 


22 


Totals of the several collections , 1898-1938 a 


Year 

Books 

Maps 

Music 

Prints 

1898 _ 

932 , 094 

50 , 195 

199 , 894 

59 , 908 

1899 _ 

957 , 056 

52 , 181 

277 , 465 

70 , 823 

1900 _ 

995 , 166 

55 , 717 

294 , 070 

84 , 871 

1901 _ 

1 , 071 , 647 

60 , 225 

311 , 020 

106 , 326 

1902 _ 

1 , 114 , 111 

64 , 921 

345 , 511 

127 , 002 

1903 _ 

1 , 195 , 531 

69 , 814 

366 , 616 

142 , 337 

1904 _ 

1 , 275 , 667 

75 , 861 

384 , 418 

158 , 451 

1905 _ 

1 , 344 , 618 

82 , 744 

410 , 352 

183 , 724 

1906 _ 

1 , 379 , 244 

89 , 869 

437 , 510 

214 , 276 

1907 _ 

1 , 433 , 848 

98 , 483 

464 , 618 

253 , 822 

1908 _ 

1 , 535 , 008 

105 , 118 

483 , 411 

279 , 567 

1909 _ 

1 , 702 , 685 

111 , 343 

501 , 293 

303 , 036 

1910 _ 

1 , 793 , 158 

118 , 165 

517 , 806 

320 , 251 

1911 _ 

1 , 891 , 729 

123 , 568 

557 , 010 

336 , 966 

1912 _ 

2 , 012 , 393 

129 , 123 

591 , 632 

349 , 745 

1913 _ 

2 , 128 , 255 

135 , 223 

630 , 799 

360 , 494 

1914 __ 

2 , 253 , 309 

141 , 712 

663 , 474 

376 , 812 

1915 _ 

2 , 363 , 873 

147 , 553 

727 , 808 

385 , 757 

1916 _ 

2 , 451 , 974 

154 , 200 

770 , 248 

392 , 905 

1917 _ 

2 , 537 , 922 

158 , 480 

795 , 749 

397 , 945 

1918 _ 

2 , 614 , 523 

160 , 090 

822 , 009 

402 , 291 

1919 _ 

2 , 710 , 556 

163 , 484 

848 , 292 

409 , 029 

1920 _ 

2 , 831 , 333 

166 , 448 

879 , 400 

418 , 976 

1921 _ 

2 , 918 , 256 

170 , 005 

919 , 041 

424 , 783 

1922 _ 

3 , 000 , 408 

174 , 093 

954 , 304 

428 , 745 

1923 _ 

3 , 089 , 341 

177 , 905 

972 , 130 

436 , 802 

1924 _ 

3 , 179 , 104 

182 , 233 

986 , 354 

442 , 977 

1925 _ 

3 , 285 , 765 

939 , 992 

1 , 001 , 645 

449 , 418 

1926 _ 

3 , 420 , 345 

985 , 390 

1 , 007 , 007 

458 , 132 

1927 _ 

3 , 556 , 767 

1 , 014 , 633 

1 , 022 , 057 

462 , 860 

1928 _ 

3 , 726 , 502 

1 , 068 , 874 

1 , 033 , 513 

469 , 062 

1929 _ 

3 , 907 , 304 

1 , 117 , 243 

1 , 045 , 481 

494 , 991 

1930 _ 

4 , 103 , 936 

1 , 161 , 478 

1 , 062,194 

498 , 715 

1931 _ 

4 , 292 , 288 

1 , 206 , 408 

1 , 075 , 400 

512 , 046 

1932 __ 

4 , 477 , 431 

1 , 265 , 116 

1 , 887 , 607 

520 , 828 

1933 _ 

4 , 633 , 476 

1 , 281 , 228 

1 , 100 , 428 

524 , 321 

1934 _ 

4 , 805 , 646 

1 , 319 , 697 

1 , 116 , 895 

528 , 256 

1935 _ 

4 , 992 , 510 

1 , 337 , 415 

1 , 131 , 747 

534 , 642 

1936 _ 

5 , 220 , 794 

1 , 358 , 479 

1 , 150 , 044 

538 , 629 

1937 _ 

5 , 395 , 044 

1 , 376 , 801 

1 , 168 , 584 

540 , 851 

1938 _ 

5 , 591 , 710 

1 , 402 , 658 

1 , 194 , 697 

542 , 074 


o These statistics are as of June 30 for each year and bring to date a table compiled by the former Chief 
Assistant Librarian, Dr. Frederick W. Ashley. No figures exist for the manuscripts, a separate count not 
being feasible. They number several millions. 


2 3 



























































The Library of Congress Endowments and Gifts of Money 
for Immediate Disbursement 1925-38 


Application 


Aeronautics department: 

Chair of Aeronautics- 

Acquisition of material 
($51,000) and Interim 
service ($14,000). 

American History dept.: 
Acquisition of source ma¬ 
terial for American His¬ 
tory: 

Photostat outfits in 
British Museum and 
Public Record Office. 

Treatment of source 
material for Ameri¬ 
can History. 

Chair of American History. 
Guide to Diplomatic His¬ 
tory of the United States. 
Rotograph service of Mod¬ 
ern Language Assn. 
Classification and arrange¬ 
ment of papers of An¬ 
drew Carnegie. 

Purchase of Alexander H. 
Stephens papers. 

Bibliographic apparatus, de¬ 
velopment of: 

General_ 

Union Catalog_ 

Bibliographical research re¬ 
lating to American writers. 

Census of Medieval and 
Renaissance Manuscripts. 

Catalog of Alchemical 
Manuscripts and Census 
of Medieval and Renais¬ 
sance Manuscripts. 

Consultant service_ 


Fine Arts department: 

Chair of Fine Arts.... 

Archive of Early Ameri¬ 
can Architecture. 

Increase of Pennell Collec¬ 
tion. 

Geography, Chair of.. 

Hispanic Literature dept.: 

Acquisition of Hispanic 
literature. 

Consultant in Hispanic 
literature. 

Hispanic Room in the 
Library of Congress. 

South American Studies... 

Indie Studies. 


Microphotography Labora¬ 
tory. 

Miscellaneous application: 

Personal services_ 

Expenses of shipping 
books. 

Purchase of law material.. 

Printing catalog cards_ 

Preparation of “Guide to 
Mexican public docu¬ 
ments.” 


Source 

Year 
of Re¬ 
ceipt 

For Direct 
Applica¬ 
tion a 

Endowments 

Income 
From 
Endow¬ 
ments a 

Daniel Guggenheim Fund.. 

1929 


$90, 624. 62 

$34, 225. 76 

_do.. _ 

1929 

$65,000.00 



James Benjamin Wilbur_ 

1925 

192, 639. 34 

b 98, 786. 98 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr 

1927-32 

445, 000. 00 



Rockefeller Foundation . . 

1933-35 

40! 000. 00 



James Benjamin Wilbur_ 

1927-28 

4, 000. 00 



James Benjamin Wilbur be- 

1933 

31, 232. 70 

6, 267. 95 

quest. 





William Evarts Benjamin... 

1927 


33, 800. 00 

29, 599. 70 

Social Science Research 

1930-33 

5, 500. 00 



Council. 




American Council of 

1934 

2, 000. 00 



Learned Societies. 




Carnegie Corporation of 

1935 

700. 00 



New York. 





Bernard M. Baruch.. 

1937 

6,000. 00 



Richard Rogers Bowker... . 

1926 

9, 800.00 

° 1,136. 85 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr _ 

1927-32 

250, 000.00 

Anonymous ($30,000 assured 

1937 

7, 500. 00 



over five-year period). 




General Education Board. 

1929-35 

35, 000. 00 



American Council of 

1933 

22, 728.14 



Learned Societies. 





General Education Board. 

1929-36 

74, 951. 01 



Carnegie Corporation of 

1935-38 

45,000. 00 



New York. 





Annie-May Hegeman. . .. 

1938 


d 186,310. 00 


Carnegie Corporation of 

1927 


93, 365. 58 

40, 986. 30 

New York. 





_do . . . 

1930-38 

32, 500. 00 



Joseph Pennell bequest. ... 

1937 

e 321, 624. 45 

34,626 74 

James B. Wilbur bequest_ 

1933 


81, 725. 61 

16, 374. 02 

Archer M. Huntington_ 

1927 


112, 305. 74 

48, 353 34 

.. .do . .. ... . 

1928 


50, 591. 25 

12, 040 62 

Anonymous. . 

1937 

40, 000. 00 

(0 

13,183. 75 

Rockefeller Foundation 

1938 

600. 00 



(total grant $1,800). 





Carnegie Corporation of 

1938 

4, 500. 00 



New York ($13,500 assured 




over 3-year period). 





Rockefeller Foundation _ 

1938 

35, 000. 00 



Anonymous gifts_ _ 

1927-32 

2, 793. 67 



G. A. Pfeiffer... 

1930 

25.00 



Bertha Cohen bequest. 

1931 

2, 929. 55 



American Library Assn_ 

1933 

750. 00 



- do_ _ _ 

1936 

1, 500.00 








See footnotes at end of table. 


2 4 



















































































The Library of Congress Endowments and Gifts of Money 
for Immediate disbursement 1925-38 —Continued 


Source 


Application 


Music: 


Development of music. 


Advancement of musical 
research. 

Purchase of autograph 
manuscript scores or 
other musical rarities. 

Folk Song Project.. 


Longworth Memorial 
Concert. 

Florence Hinkle Wither¬ 
spoon Memorial (pur¬ 
chase of music). 

Orientalia department: 

Wang collection of Chinese 
books and manuscripts. 

Collection of Chinese 
manuscript maps. 

Certain Chinese “gazet¬ 
teers” (toward purchase 
price of). 

Development of training 
center for Far Eastern 
Studies at the Library 
of Congress. 

Cataloging of Orientalia 
collection. 


Semitic Literature dept.: 
Acquisition of material- 

Slavic Literature dept.: 
Purchase of material- 


Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge 
(Music Auditorium). 
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. 

_do.. 

_do.. 

Carl Engel_ 

Anonymous (musical con¬ 
certs) . 

“Nicholas Longworth” 
Fund. 

Royalties from Charles M. 
Loeffler’s “Canticle of the 
Sun.” 

Gertrude Clarke Whittall: 

(Concerts).. 

(Pavilion)_ 

Friends of Music.. 

Beethoven Association (Son- 
neck Memorial Fund). 

Beethoven Association_ 

Friends of Music.. 

Helen Carter Leidy bequest. 

Sundry contributions_ 

Annie C. B. Parker_ 

Estate of Mrs. Parker_ 

Andrew W. Mellon_ 

Carnegie Corporation of 
New York. 

John Barton Payne..— 

Mrs. Adolph C. Miller.. 

American Council of 
Learned Soc. 

Sundry Contributions. 

Bequest of Herbert Wither¬ 
spoon. 


Andrew W. Mellon..... 

_do. 

Mrs. William H. Moore. 


American Council of 
Learned Soc. and Rocke¬ 
feller Foundation. 

Rockefeller Foundation_ 

American Council of 
Learned Soc. ($34,300 as¬ 
sured over 5-year period). 

Received through Emanuel 
Celler. 

Alexis V. Babine bequest. 

♦Totals.. 


Year 
of Re¬ 
ceipt 


1925 

1925 

1925 

1926 
1929-31 

1937 

1933 

1933 


1936 
1938 

1937 
1929 


For Direct 
Applica¬ 
tion a 


$80,000.00 
39,489. 45 


6, 400.00 
3, 500.00 


38. 30 


9,400. 00 
33, 500.00 
500. 00 


Endowments 


(*) 

$147,129. 62 


$293,088.28 
95,114.80 


7, 564. 38 


175,000.00 


12,084.13 


Income 
From 
Endow¬ 
ments a 


1, 261. 61 


14,409.31 


4,622. 32 


1925-31 

1929- 37 
1934 

1930- 37 

1928- 31 
1932 
1928 

1929- 35 


4, 500.00 
8, 750. 75 
1, 013. 00 
163. 04 
4,000. 00 
1,000.00 
100.00 
15,000. 00 


1928 

1928-30 

1930 


1 , 000 . 00 
500.00 
1, 300.00 


1935-36 418.21 

1938 3, 592.44 


1928 

1930 

1933 

1933-38 


10, 000. 00 
12, 500.00 
1 , 000 . 00 

45,800. 00 


1937 1,500. 00 

1938 4,495.00 


1933 

1931 


350.00 


$1,413,787.56 


6,627. 08 


h$l,552,424.50 


2,228.73 


$746,307.06 


a Received through December 31,1938. 

b Collected $118,264.76, refunded $19,477.78 to donor under terms of the endowment, 
e Collected $7,898.85, refunded $6,762.00 to donor and his wife under terms of the endowment, 
d Represents real estate in Washington, D. C. assessed at $372,620; one-half of the proceeds from the sale 
of which is to constitute an endowment fund as a Memorial to the late Henry Kirke Porter. The amount 
stated as the principal of such fund is for the moment one-half of the present assessed value. 
e Including real estate, mortgages, etc. in Philadelphia appraised at $85,394.84. 

f a corporate stock held by the Bank of New York and donor as trustees: 2,500 shares, par value $250,000. 
Fund provides also for a “Chair of Poetry in the English Language”, 
g Securities in the amount of $400,000 held by the Northern Trust Company of Chicago as trustee, 
h Including the sums named in notes (f) and (g), the endowments total $2,202,424.50. 

*By adding together the totals for direct application, the endowments, the income and the two trust 
funds noted in (f) and (g) above, we obtain a grand total of monies available since 1925, for the benefit of 
the Library and its collections, of $4,362,519.12. 


2 5 








































































THE ACT OF CONGRESS CREATING 
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TRUST FUND BOARD 


[Public, No. 541—68th Congress; 43 Stat. 1107. Recommended unanimously by 
the Joint Committee on the Library, passed both Houses by unanimous consent 
at the second session of the Sixty-eighth Congress, and approved by the President 
March 3, 1925; as amended by Act approved January 27, 1926 (44 Stat. 2), by 
Act approved April 13, 1936 (49 Stat. 1205), and by Act approved June 23, 1936 
(49 Stat. 1894)] 

AN AC1 

To create a Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, and for other purposes 

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That a board is hereby 
created and established, to be known as the Library of Congress 
Trust Fund Board (hereinafter referred to as the board), which shall 
consist of the Secretary of the Treasury, the chairman of the Joint 
Committee on the Library, the Librarian of Congress, and two persons 
appointed by the President for a term of five years each (the first 
appointments being for three and five years, respectively). Three 
members of the board shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of 
business, and the board shall have an official seal, which shall be 
judicially noticed. The board may adopt rules and regulations in 
regard to its procedure and the conduct of its business. 

No compensation shall be paid to the members of the board for 
their services as such members, but they shall be reimbursed for the 
expenses necessarily incurred by them, out of the income from the 
fund or funds in connection with which such expenses are incurred. 
The voucher of the chairman of the board shall be sufficient evidence 
that the expenses are properly allowable. Any expenses of the board, 
including the cost of its seal, not properly chargeable to the income 
of any trust fund held by it, shall be estimated for in the annual 
estimates of the Librarian for the maintenance of the Library of 
Congress. 

Sec. 2. The board is hereby authorized to accept, receive, hold and 
administer such gifts, bequests, or devises of property for the benefit 
of, or in connection with, the Library, its collections, or its service, as 
may be approved by the board and by the Joint Committee on the 
Library. 

The moneys or securities composing the trust funds given or be¬ 
queathed to the board shall be receipted for by the Secretary of the 
Treasury, who shall invest, reinvest, or retain investments as the 


26 


board may from time to time determine. The income as and when 
collected shall be deposited with the Treasurer of the United States, 
who shall enter it in a special account to the credit of the Library of 
Congress and subject to disbursement by the Librarian for the pur¬ 
poses in each case specified; and the Treasurer of the United States 
is hereby authorized to honor the requisitions of the Librarian made 
in such manner and in accordance with such regulations as the 
Treasurer may from time to time prescribe: Provided , however , That 
the board is not authorized to engage in any business nor to exercise 
any voting privilege which may be incidental to securities in its 
hands, nor shall the board make any investments that could not 
lawfully be made by a trust company in the District of Columbia, 
except that it may make any investments directly authorized by the 
instrument of gift, and may retain any investments accepted by it. 

In the absence of any specification to the contrary, the board may 
deposit the principal sum, in cash, with the Treasurer of the United 
States as a permanent loan to the United States Treasury, and the 
Treasurer shall thereafter credit such deposit with interest at the rate 
of 4 per centum per annum, payable semiannually, such interest, as 
income, being subject to disbursement by the Librarian of Congress 
for the purposes specified: Provided , however , That the total of such 
principal sums at any time so held by the Treasurer under this 
authorization shall not exceed the sum of $5,000,000. 

Sec. 3. The board shall have perpetual succession, with all the 
usual powers and obligations of a trustee, including the power to sell, 
except as herein limited, in respect of ail property, moneys, or secu¬ 
rities which shall be conveyed, transferred, assigned, bequeathed, 
delivered, or paid over to it for the purposes above specified. The 
board may be sued in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, 
which is hereby given jurisdiction of such suits, for the purpose of 
enforcing the provisions of any trust accepted by it. 

Sec. 4. Nothing in this act shall be construed as prohibiting or 
restricting the Librarian of Congress from accepting, in the name of 
the United States, gifts or bequests of money for immediate disburse¬ 
ment in the interest of the Library, its collections, or its service. 
Such gifts or bequests, after acceptance by the Librarian, shall be 
paid by the donor or his representative to the Treasurer of the United 
States, whose receipts shall be their acquittance. The Treasurer of 
the United States shall enter them in a special account to the credit 
of the Library of Congress and subject to disbursement by the 
Librarian for the purposes in each case specified. 


27 


Sec. 5. Gifts or bequests to or for the benefit of the Library of 
Congress, including those to the board, and the income therefrom, 
shall be exempt from all Federal taxes. 

Sec. 6. Employees of the Library of Congress who perform special 
functions for the performance of which funds have been entrusted 
to the board or the Librarian, or in connection with cooperative un¬ 
dertakings in which the Library of Congress is engaged, shall not 
be subject to the proviso contained in the act maldng appropriations 
for the legislative, executive, and judicial expenses of the Govern¬ 
ment for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918, and for other purposes, 
approved March 3, 1917, in Thirty-ninth Statutes at Large, at page 
1106; nor shall any additional compensation so paid to such em¬ 
ployees be construed as a double salary under the provisions of sec¬ 
tion 6 of the act making appropriations for the legislative, executive, 
and judicial expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending 
JuDe 30, 1917, as amended (Thirty-ninth Statutes at Large, page 
582). 

Sec. 7. The board shall submit to the Congress an annual report 
of the moneys or securities received and held by it and of its 
operations. 


28 


FORM OF GIFT OR BEQUEST TO THE 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


A. Of material: 

“To the United States of America, to be placed in the Library of Congress 
and administered therein by the authorities thereof.” 

B. Of endowments: 

By an act approved March 3, 1925 (see Appendix V to this report), Con¬ 
gress created a “Library of Congress Trust Fund Board”, a quasi corporation, 
with perpetual succession, and “all the usual powers of a trustee”, including 
the power to “invest, reinvest, and retain investments”, and, specifically, 
the authority to “accept, receive, hold, and administer such gifts, bequests, 
or devises of property for the benefit of, or in connection with, the Library, 
its collections or its service, as may be approved by the Board and by the 
Joint Committee on the Library.” 

Endowments for this purpose may therefore be made direct to this Board. 

C. Of money for immediate application: 

Such gifts may be made directly to the Librarian, who, under section 4 
of the above-mentioned act, has authority to accept them, deposit them 
with the Treasurer of the United States, and apply them to the purposes 
specified. 


Note. —All gifts or bequests to or for the benefit of the Library . . . and the 
income therefrom , are exempt from all Federal taxes. 


THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TRUST FUND BOARD 
Ex officio: 

Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, Chairman. 

Senator Alben W. Barkley, Chairman of Joint Committee on the Library. 
Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, Secretary. 


Appointive: 

Adolph C. Miller, Esq., Washington, D. C. (Term expires Mar. 9, 1943.) 
Mrs. Eugene Meyer, Washington, D. C. (Term expires Mar. 9, 1940.) 


2 9 


131276—U- s. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1939 

















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